East Indiamen off a Coast

c. 1600 - c. 1630

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 104 cm × width 199 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, in the middle of one of the flags of the large ship: Vroom

Technical notes

The support, a plain-weave canvas, has been lined. The tacking edges have not been preserved, and cusping is only visible at the bottom. The paint was applied over a white ground, thinly in areas such as the sky and sea. Reserves were left for the larger ships, while the small ones were painted over the sea. The figures seem to have been painted in a final stage. Small pentimenti are present, for example in the positioning of the leg of one of the figures and the anchor.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 17 November 2004

Condition

Poor. The sky is severely abraded. The many old retouchings and the varnish are discoloured.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1954: transferred to a new wooden support

Provenance

...; from H.A. Kuik-Visschersdam, Amsterdam, fl. 9,000, to the museum, with support from J.W. IJzerman, 1930

Object number: SK-A-3108

Credit line: Gift of J.W. IJzerman, The Hague

The artist

Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (Haarlem c. 1566 - Haarlem 1640)

According to Karel van Mander in his lengthy account of Hendrick Vroom’s life, the artist was born in Haarlem in 1566. He began his career as a decorator of delftware, his father’s craft. A document of 1634 reveals that he learned ‘art’ in Delft. He travelled to Spain and Italy in his youth, remaining away from home for more than five years. While he was in Rome he met Paulus Bril, who encouraged him to start painting and gave him lessons. Between around 1585 and 1587 he was in the service of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. His journey back to the Dutch Republic took him through Venice, Milan, Turin, Lyon, Paris and Rouen.

Back in Haarlem he married Joosgen Cornelisdr Gans, but he was soon travelling again. Around 1591 he went to Gdansk, where his uncle Frederick Henricksz was city architect. According to Van Mander he made an altarpiece there (now probably lost), and his uncle taught him the rules of perspective. He then set off for Spain again but was shipwrecked and returned to his native Haarlem in 1592, where he remained for the rest of his life.

From the moment he got back, Vroom started making tapestry designs and painting marines. A series of ten tapestry designs traced the battle between the English and the Spanish Armada.¹ Another major series of tapestries he designed is preserved in Middelburg Abbey. Vroom made his earliest known dated painting in 1599, The Return to Amsterdam of the Second Expedition to the East Indies, 19 July 1599 (SK-A-2858). His earlier paintings are lost.

Van Mander describes and explains the origins of the new genre of marine painting as follows. ‘Returned home he [Vroom] continued, on the advice of the painters there, making pieces with ships, and gradually he got better and better at making them. And since there is much sea-faring in Holland, the public also started to take great pleasure in these little ships.’

Vroom painted historical naval battles, ships’ portraits and views of maritime towns like Hoorn, Amsterdam and Vlissingen. His highly detailed depictions soon brought him fame, enabling him to ask very high prices for them. Van Mander also says that he was highly productive, with the result that he earned a fortune from his work.

Vroom’s two sons, Cornelis (c. 1590/91-1661) and Frederik (c. 1600-67), both became painters. According to Houbraken, Jan Porcellis (before c. 1584-1632) was apprenticed to Hendrick Vroom. Given the similarities between Vroom’s work and that of Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen (before 1577-1633), it is assumed that he too was a pupil of Vroom’s.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 287r-88v; Ampzing 1621, [p. 33]; Schrevelius 1648, pp. 386-89; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 146-47; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 213; Von Wurzbach II, 1910, pp. 833-34; Bredius II, 1916, pp. 659-61, 667-79, VII, 1921, p. 274; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, pp. 581-82; Russell 1983, pp. 91-140, 204-11; Ruurs in Miedema II, 1995, pp. 226-38; Giltaij in Rotterdam-Berlin 1996, p. 79; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 332-37

Entry

Several large ships are sailing just off the Dutch coast, with numerous figures standing on the beach and dunes. In the Rijksmuseum’s collection catalogue of 1934 it was suggested that the artist depicted the departure of the second fleet to the East Indies in May 1598 under the command of Jacob van Neck.² However, there are no indications that the largest ship was one of the four that took part in the expedition.³ The ship’s stern is not visible, making it impossible to determine its name. It is for that reason that it is better to speak of East Indiamen setting sail. According to the 1976 catalogue, the large ship is the Mauritius, one of the ships that was on both the first and the second expeditions to the East Indies (cf. SK-A-2858).⁴ It is suggested in the same catalogue that the ships are sailing in the Marsdiep, the channel between Den Helder and the island of Texel used by ships leaving Amsterdam for the East. However, there are no clearly recognizable landmarks to identify the site. The spectators include both fishermen and elegantly clad couples, who according to Keyes recall drawings by Hendrick Goltzius and Jacques de Gheyn II.⁵ The similarities, though, are no more than superficial.

This painting is very akin to others by Vroom. It has his typical palette, and the dark blue of the water constantly recurs in his work, as does the distinctive, rather stiff and archaic rendering of the waves. The ships are coming from every direction, which reinforces the sense of recession into depth.⁶ In contrast to many other of his paintings, Vroom did not use a bird’s-eye perspective. The viewer is on the beach, as it were. It is difficult to date this picture, because there is no clear development in Vroom’s style. The use of a low or a high horizon is of no assistance, for he used both throughout his career (cf. SK-A-2858 and SK-A-602).

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 334.

Literature

Bol 1973, p. 26; Keyes 1975, I, p. 29

Collection catalogues

1934, p. 311, no. 2606c; 1960, p. 336, no. 2606 A 5; 1976, p. 592, no. A 3108 (as The ‘Mauritius’ and Other East Indiamen Sailing out of the Marsdiep); 2007, no. 334

Citation

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Hendrik Cornelisz. Vroom, East Indiamen off a Coast, c. 1600 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6502

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